Web provisioning technology has been developed to build Web sites for the Internet and/or intranets. Web provisioning generally includes selecting a site template that defines the structure and the content of a Web site. Based on the content of the site template, Web provisioning technology populates the initial page, the directories, and the site structures of the Web site. Web provisioning technology enables a user to provision multiple Web sites from a single site template. As a result, the predefined site templates enable a user to quickly create Web sites without spending much time on deciding how the sites should look or function.
Conventionally, a site template is a monolithic script describing functionalities that a Web site can provision. Different Web sites may have very different functionality requirements. For example, a Web site for an individual user may require functionalities that are quite different from a Web site for a group of users. Thus, multiple site templates may be designed for different Web sites to provision. FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary site template 100. The site template 100 is a monolithic document containing detailed information for functionalities that a site using the site template 100 can provision. For example, the site template 100 includes default data and definitions for a Documents functionality 102, a Video Clips Library functionality 104, and a Favorite Items functionality 106. For the Documents functionality 102, the site template 100 may detail information such as document names, who can access the documents, and expiration dates of the documents. For the Video Clips Library functionality 104, the site template may detail information such as names of the video clips, locations of the video clips, metadata or metadata definitions that should apply to video clips, and sizes of the video clips, etc. For the Favorite Items functionality 106, the site template 100 may detail information such as what the items are and locations of these items. Alternatively, the site template 100 may include a self-containing set of documents detailing information for functionalities provided for sites provisioning from the site template 100.
Different site templates may contain the same or similar functionalities. For site templates such as the site template 100 that is implemented as a monolithic document including detailed information for each functionality, when a site template developer needs to use functionalities provisioned in other site templates, the developer often copies the functionalities from the other site templates. For example, if the site template that a developer is creating needs to use the Documents functionality 102 in the site template 100, the developer needs to copy all the default data and definitions for the Documents functionality 102 from the site template 100 and paste the copied information into the new site template.
Such a copy and paste approach may lead to several problems. For example, if the Documents functionality 102 in the site template 100 is updated, the Documents functionality that has been copied to the new site template would not be automatically updated. That is, changes to a functionality provided by a site template would not be automatically replicated in site templates copying the functionality from the site template.
Alternatively, a developer of a site template could also use a loosely bound, file-based linking mechanism to indirectly point at files in other site templates. This approach had the benefit of consolidating logic in a central location, i.e., the site template. However, because such linking is inherently unstructured, any change to the file structure of the other site templates would void the links and thus break any dependent site templates containing the links. Therefore, this approach of linking common entities in site templates was fragile.
In addition, in some Web provisioning platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint®, a Web site can only use provisioning information from the site template the Web site is provisioned from. The site template serves as a foundation and limits which functionalities can be added to the provisioned Web site. As a result, the Web site is constrained to the set of functionalities included in the site template. The Web site cannot be modified to support functionalities different from the functionalities provided by the site template. However, given that business requirements for a Web site may change from time to time, a Web site may evolve during its lifetime and the functionalities required for the Web site may change. The monolithic site template implementation thus limits the evolution of Web sites provisioned from a monolithic site template.
Thus, conventional Web provisioning technology uses a monolithic site template providing all detailed information of functionalities that a Web site can provision. This conventional approach allows users to quickly create Web sites without spending much time on deciding how the Web site should look. However, this conventional approach does not allow efficient modifications of functionalities that are shared by different site templates. This conventional approach also does not allow sites provisioned from a site template to evolve the functionalities the site supports after the provisioning process.